Structured as an open letter to his fifteen-year-old son, Ta-Nehisi Coates has written an extensive personal history explicitly about growing up within the power structures of the U.S., and its effects on the people within it.

This is not a Racism 101 for skeptical white people feeling vaguely miffed about Affirmative Action. This isn’t a book to turn racists into non-racists, if such a book were possible. This is a heartfelt personal account of difficult times in a country that does not want to acknowledge its problems.

It helps to have read Coates’s magazine work. It helps to know the history of race in the U.S. But it’s not necessary, if one keeps an open mind.